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Comment by actfrench | Hacker News Reader

"forced to sit in front of a screen" is the key phrase here. What if we didn't force them to sit, but allowed them to stand and move about freely, come and go when they please, have some autonomy and decision making power around what goes on in class (e.g. share preferences for what they want to learn) and give them frequent movement breaks (a good set of headphones, an ipad with a wide lens attached allows that). What if we engaged them more so they were excited to see what was happening on their screen? Kids aren't any more excited to sit and do something boring than we are.

The key problem here(and it's not a small one) is that we need to give ALL kids access to this hardware to support their learning, not just a few. Right now only 18% of US households have a device. I've seen school districts short 20,000 computers.

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It's a much bigger question/challenge than lack of hardware.

With all respect, the model this assumes for how kids work... is just not how kids work. It's not how attention works.

Think about it like a movie. Kids at different ages will sit through movies of different lengths and subjects. Those movies have production budgets- of minimum thousands of dollars per second even at the lowest end, and shooting and editing commitments that are tens to hundreds or more person hours per video second.

Expecting a live performer to engage not just 1 passive kid but n active kids with a new show every day over a screen- where every mistake or every blip doesn't get edited out in post but actually has to be dealt with in real time, while each kid has their own dynamics, their own family situations, their own issues PRESENT WITH THEM while all this is going on....

In terms of the quantity of human attention at production time to ensure consumer engagement- the ratio between a movie and a live person on the other side of the screen is, like, 1,000,000 to 1.

It is NOT POSSIBLE to solve the engagement problem in the way that remote school is expected to solve for it and there is no model, resource, technology, or anything that makes it work.

This is coming from a long time ed tech advocate, having built games and education platforms and worked in schools and having 3 kids of my own.

What we are doing with remote school is INSANITY.

Unfortunately, the alternatives are also insane.

There is no solving anything. There's no what if. There's no answer.

And more pointedly- it sounds like the poster here does not have kids.

Pro tip, no offense intended- if you don't have kids- don't weigh in on these issues. You don't know what you're talking about. And you don't have any idea how much you don't know what you're talking about. It isn't worth it for you or for anyone else to engage.

Have a nice day.

The author does allude to this, by mentioning that remote learning is almost worse than nothing.

Honestly, we probably should just cancel at least the first half of the school year altogether, but that would mean admitting how utterly dismal our Covid response has been, and so it is not politically possible. Thus a whole generation of kids have to deal with this nonsense. It's a shame.

> that would mean admitting how utterly dismal our Covid response has been

Only if there would've been a better way. While COVID surely could've been handled a bit better overall, I don't think a lockdown was fully avoidable (note that it escaped Wuhan while the city was in a lockdown stricter than anything seen outside of Wuhan) and remote learning is, as shown above, not ideal either. So I don't think admitting that this school year was bad equals admitting a bad response to COVID.

> if you don't have kids- don't weigh in on these issues

I agree, but would also add that even if you do have kids, they probably have personalities and circumstances unlike everyone else's kids. And that in all likelihood your sample size is too hilariously small to be able to produce useful broad generalizations from your experience.

Yes and I’d even go so far as to say I‘m not sure the “screen” really has much to do with the difficulty. I had a hard time sitting and paying attention in class 25 years ago. All of my teachers “solved” this by putting me in the front row so they could keep an eye on me and remind me to sit again. But my 3rd grade teacher gave me a desk in the back row so I could sit in my chair, sit on my desk, or stand without bothering the other students. It turned out I could pay attention when I wasn’t forced to assume the learning position.

I have two kids doing remote learning (one in kinder, one in 3rd grade). Since the 5yo is only on her 3rd day of remote learning ever, I'm spending more time "babysitting" her session. The class does involve some amount of physical movement (e.g "now go bring something square") and leaving the zoom meeting for 30 min periods to focus on drawing activities, but then I need to be on top of whether the kid is still engaged (or whether she wandered off to play with legos) and of what times the zoom class resumes. When you're dealing w/ a class of 20-30 small kids, there's a also good chunk of time wasted on logistics (fumbling w/ zoom password, waiting for kids to rejoin the meeting, "jimmy, you need to mute/unmute yourself", "please raise your hand if you want to talk" reminders, etc).

I feel that the class content seems sufficiently engaging (compared to my own kinder experience of strict butts-in-chair, all forward facing desks and a blackboard in a physical class), but even then, it requires dividing my attention between work and making sure the kid is on task.

The third grader has some experience with remote learning from before summer vacations, so things are relatively more smooth when the class is on, but we still need to keep tabs on when recess breaks are supposed to end. His teacher apparently has quite a bit more experience w/ remote learning from teaching classes during summer, and the class appears fairly engaging, with good usage of share screen and multimedia. But I do feel like the quality of learning seems low. Not sure if it's because of US standards. My son's curriculum hasn't really touched multiplication yet, but I distinctively remember having that mastered in 3rd grade, and also singapore math booklets that my wife bought to complement studies also apply both multiplication and division extensively at 3rd grade level)

It can also be challenging to juggle both parents AND both kids having zoom meetings simultaneously, since meetings are mutually disruptive, especially with loud multimedia activities. I feel like the parts that work the best are the ones similar to my old-school education: giving instructions on a task, then letting kids do them, recess, rinse and repeat. I'm not really sold on the high tech gimmicks (videos w/ songs etc).

A balance ball seems to be working better than a hard wood chair was for the seven year old to handle 3-4 hours of Zoom. Posture is much better too.

Also trying to figure out how to throw up the Zoom conference on the TV. I think it'll probably be much more natural for the kids.

Google Chrome and macOS can both do desktop mirroring (to a Chromecast device or Apple TV respectively), so then you just need a webcam with a long cable you can stick on top of the TV.

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